Tuesday, November 30, 2010

It's All Greek to Me



The weekend before Thanksgiving, I did some volunteer work. For the holiday season, one of the local churches I attend conducted an outreach service through which they delivered Thanksgiving meals to at-need families around the DC metro area. I was part of the loading & unloading team, which took 250 meal boxes off the delivery truck and then loaded them into the cars of the volunteers who were to present the meals to the families. After all of the volunteers had left, there were still about 50 boxes left unaccounted for. (Translation: multiple volunteers who had signed up to help deliver boxes didn't show up. Sigh.) So, the rest of us volunteers who were still there took what was left and helped to deliver the meals to the families that were expecting the boxes.

Why am I mentioning any of this? As I was heading home after volunteering, for some reason, Black fraternities and sororities came to mind. When I was in college, I remember the Greeks always mentioning volunteering as their main contribution to society as an organization. I always found it to be somewhat ironic whenever their community service was brought up, because for the most part, very little of it was ever made public. As a college student who never pledged, the things I most associated with Greeks were step shows, hearing them brag about their pledging process, and their strolling getting in my way when I was trying to dance up on a chick at a party. For this reason, I always wondered why these seemed to be the prevalent things that separated them from the rest of us instead of the alleged community service that was supposed to be the foundation for their organizations in the first place.

Furthermore, when you look at the mission statements for the NPHC fraternities, every one of them has a focus on providing service to the community (with the exception of Kappa Alpha Psi, whose only concern seems to be "being really good at everything"). I find it strange that service is such a common theme, yet most of the volunteer service being provided is done in private, unbeknownst to the rest of the college community. How can you attract like-minded individuals with your good deeds if they don't even know that it's being done?

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Chivalry Is Sooo 20th Century...

We all know the facts. We've all heard the statistics, read the books, and watched the specials. Most educated black women are single. Sure, 50% of marriages in America end in divorce, but these chicks can't even get married to know what divorce feels like. There have been too many reports, too many books from comedians, and too many blog posts addressing the issue. Hell, I even talked about it on this blog a while ago. So I won't even bother to belabor the point any further. It is what it is.

Anyway, I found myself on this blog the other day, and I was really enjoying the posts and the blogger's point of view. After some perusal, I stumbled upon this post. The video in particular got me thinking, specifically the part when they pointed out that 42% of black women have never been married. They went on to say that because black women outnumber black men by so much, even if every black man in the country married a black woman, 1 out of every 12 black woman would still wind up single. Wow. Then when you eliminate the ones without an education and the ones in jail, the pickings for black women becomes quite slim.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Why Advice is Stupid

"I always call n*ggas fools for wanting to learn the hard way/ When I'm really the fool for tryna teach 'em" - Joe Budden

Very often, I find myself in situations where I see someone I know about to make a bad decision. Very often, of course, because people are idiots. Now, when faced with these situations, I have one of two options. I can either a.) try to intercede and stop them from making an ill-advised move, or b.) sit back and watch them fail miserably. Choice b is obviously more enjoyable, since other people's failures make me feel better about my own life. Unfortunately, there are a few people in this miserable world that I actually care about (who knew?), in which case I feel compelled/obligated to offer some advice.

To be completely transparent, I must admit that most of my advice comes from a very selfish place. As a man that thinks he always knows best, I enjoy being able to tell people why I'm right and they're wrong. I take pleasure in proving to other people that I'm smarter than them. And in several occasions, they will even admit to such by letting me know just how wise and superior I am. Responses such as, "That's a great point!" or "I never looked at it that way!" or "You are an amazing genius! I'm lucky to know you!" typically let me know that my job is complete. I have imparted my knowledge on your wretched soul, and now you are forever indebted to my beautiful mind.

BUT...

There is an inherent problem in all of this.